2008-12-26

Cricket

I was talking to an American the other day and he was miffed at the Iraqis for having shoes thrown at his president.

I referred him to this where Bush himself says "These journalists here were very apologetic, they were -- said, this doesn't represent the Iraqi people.". Which says more about Iraqis than that ratbag Iraqi does. Consider the largesse of those COMPLETELY INNOCENT Iraqis who are attentively listening to what a foreign head of state (who invaded their country) has to say. And after the innocent, despite the fact that they had NOTHING TO DO WITH IT, they apologized to Bush and sided with Bush, not the arsehole Iraqi. Man, I'm stoked.

Almost as stoked as when I watched the US government's abhorrence at hazing of Iraqi terrorists in Abu Graib and the subsequent prosecution of the protagonists.

In fact, it says more of Arab Muslims that the majority seems to continually talk about the relatively mild hazing of terrorists rather than Saddam's genuine brutality against innocents or more to the point - the fact that the US prosecuted those people whereas they had no desire to prosecute Saddam.

And it says more about blacks that they are quick to come out with comments about slavery but you'll never hear them praise how a shitload of whites died killing a shitload of other whites so that they could be free.

But here's the one that takes the cake.

I asked (I have to ask these really basic questions because Americans are Americans) my American friend if he knew the game of "cricket". Like soccer except you use a hockey stick? Close enough.

Anyway, I told him that in one game of cricket, the Australian public booed their own team off the field. Really? And can you guess why? They hit the ball wrong? Nope. They won the match. What??? He was unable to think of any reason why the Australian people would boo their own team off the field after they had just won a game of cricket.

The reason Australians did that? Because the Australian bowler bowled underarm (*), and although that wasn't actually against the rules, the only reason it wasn't against the rules was because they thought that no-one would be such an arsehole to actually do that. They've amended the rules since to cope with arseholes.

But it says far more about Australia's character that the majority of Australians would boo their own team after a victory than the fact that we happen to have the occasional arsehole who happens to be good at cricket. Can you imagine Argentina booing off Maradona?

And it says far more about New Zealand's character that you will never hear them mention how great the Australian people were to disown their own sporting heroes when they win immorally.

That may take the cake, but America takes the icing. Despite all the anti-Americanism emanating from arsehole countries like Australia, it never returns the abuse. By rights those arsehole Australians with their anti-American bigotry deserve nothing less than complete genocide. I know that. The Americans probably know that too. But they'll never say anything.

Frickin goody two shoes Americans showing up Australians for the relative ratbags they/we are, when we could so easily have help a hard-won position of the most moral country on the planet ever, unassailably so, given that we turned up to every damn fight for freedom we could get into, unlike everyone else who was absent for some war or another. The sole blot on our record was our current PM's premature withdrawal from Iraq. At least relative to everyone else. Vietnam was another premature withdrawal, but America was withdrawing at the same time I believe, so it was a tandem betrayal of the good people of Vietnam.

Point of note (especially for the Chinese, Arabs etc who can't understand how we manage to build societies so much better than theirs) - THIS is where our relatively decent societies come from - we don't compete on who is the richest, or who is the best conqueror - we compete on WHO IS THE MOST MORAL/DECENT/NICE! We have some debate about what actions are moral/immoral, and that causes us great consternation, but we are all competing based on this. Even the left-wing scum who think that being Robin Hood makes them more moral (and it doesn't help that we really do treat Robin Hood as a hero either!). They do their despicable acts because they think they are being moral, not so much because they're really after the $10 that they would personally get if they could decapitate Bill Gates and spread his wealth around. And when you combine that with a human trait to be violently dogmatic, and then give them a juicy dogma like communism, well, you can see what happens for yourself.

(*) P.S. This was on the last ball of the game, where New Zealand needed to hit a 6 in order to win. The underarm bowl - ball travelling on the ground - prevented that (fairly unlikely) possibility.